Health Care Holds Lessons That Can Heal Education

America's education system can learn a lot from health care. Our students might have a brighter future if we diagnosed and treated educational illnesses the way we diagnose medical ones - by using evidence-based methods.

What are some symptoms of our educational illnesses? To start with, close to 20 percent of students in the United States don't learn to read properly. And dyslexia impacts close to 20% of the English-speaking population, yet the education system has yet to consistently embrace evidence-based interventions.

In medicine, for each diagnosis there is a procedure code that is associated with a treatment.  These are vetted by medical experts. The codes, in turn, are associated with a cost to treat.

We should begin to view education in similar terms. The educational illness of poor reading skills, for example could be associated with a procedure code for proven evidence-based solutions vetted by educational experts. The cost can then be budgeted in the same way that insurers budget for health care expenses.

If educational diagnoses were clearly identified and linked with evidence-based solutions, the case for allocating funds, whether public or private, would be much easier to make. These solutions include approaches such as expanding the Head Start program and other early childhood interventions and devoting more resources to special education.

Good education is as important to our country's future as good health care. We have learned how to apply evidence in a systematic way to treating health concerns. We can apply that knowledge to treating the country's educational illnesses that are in desperate need of attention.